Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

BIG LITTLE LIES by Liane Moriarty

Wow. BLL has been sitting on my desk next to my laptop for months! Months and months. This post is so overdue. Woops! Sorry to anyone who was waiting for this.

I LOVED THIS BOOK. Liane Moriarty is, as you probably already know, one of my favourite authors in the world. AND she's Australian.

Her books are hilarious and intelligent, her characters are authentic and believable, her stories are out-of-this-world entertaining, and her writing is unmatchable in quality and execution. I got to see her at the Perth Writers Festival this year, which was amaaazzzinnggg.

Big Little Lies is her latest release (she's written quite a number of novels, and I haven't read all of them yet but I WILL!) and it has a murder mystery! Someone has been killed, and at a primary school quiz night, no less! The characters are so captivating, the plot can't help but entice, and the writing delivers the whole package together so brilliantly.

There are some heavy things some of the characters go through that are pretty serious and challenging, such as domestic violence, but Liane touched upon them with finesse and grounded authenticity. I absolutely love the way Liz Byrski worded it when she talked about this at the Perth Writers Festival in a panel along with Liane. Liz described them as "dark, contentious issues dealt with very lightly and never trivially".

I'm really excited for this book to be adapted to the screen - especially with Reese Witherspoon playing Madeline and Nicole Kidman playing Celeste.

My rating: 4.5 stars

The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

The Last Anniversaryby Liane Moriarty

When I flipped through the Perth Writers Festival brochure I was shocked and excited to see one of my favourite author’s names. Liane Moriarty, in PERTH?!?! my mind exclaimed. I was in a year-long reading slump and decided I’d had enough. A few of Liane’s pre-Husband’s Secret novels were sitting unread on my bookshelf so I picked up the one I knew the least about (I had started reading Three Wishes a while back but I wanted to dive into something completely afresh). That book happened to be The Last Anniversary.

It all happened because of a mystery. The Munro Baby Mystery, to be specific. A baby was found in its home, the parents nowhere to be found. Alice and Jack Munro disappeared into thin air, leaving the kettle boiling for tea and a freshly baked marble cake ready for frosting. The neighbours, two teenage girls, Connie and Rose, came by to visit them and found the baby.

This mystery is the basis of every plotline and character in the novel. Connie and Rose took the baby home and looked after her as their own. They called the baby Enigma, and Enigma went and had kids, and then her two kids went and had three kids. All the kids are adults now, the youngest is in their late thirties. Suffice to say, there are a lot of characters in this book. It took me a little while to figure out who was whose daughter, who were siblings, who were cousins, etc. But obviously it was worth it to take the time to get to know the characters, because it’s Liane Moriarty and duh, the book is gonna be awesome. And it was. Awesome characters, awesome writing, awesome storyIine, awesome everything. I rated it 4.5 stars, so..

A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty

A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty

click through to Goodreads

My rating: 5 stars! 

A Corner of White is the first book in the series "The Colours of Madeleine" (or "The Colors of Madeleine" if you're American) by Australian author Jaclyn Moriarty.

In case you are a new reader of Chimneys and Magic, you might know her as one of my all time favourite authors, whose writing, stories, characters, imagination and words I greatly admire. She wrote Finding Cassie Crazy (the first book of hers I read back in high school), The Betrayal of Bindy MacKenzie, Feeling Sorry for Celia and Dreaming of Amelia (most of these novels have various other titles in nations abroad), as well as a handful of other adult novels. Jaclyn Moriarty led me straight to her sister Liane Moriarty, who also fast become one of my favourite authors ever, especially due to What Alice Forgot (which was the first novel of hers I read). Anyway, enough babbling on about authors and such, there's so much I have to say about this book so let's get a-moving.

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

I had a lot of fun writing Goodreads status updates for this one as I read through it. 

You can see them here.

This was a rather intense one. I know it's called The Husband's Secret so I should have expected some mystery and twists, but there's some heavy stuff that these characters deal with! For example: grief, guilt, betrayal, the blurred line between right and wrong, and murder. There were also lots of secrets and tragedies.

New on my bookshelf

**The Musician's Daughter**
by Susanne Dunlap

This beauty came the mail yesterday! 

I'm excited for it because not only is it historical fiction, but the whole musical element is in there too. And mystery. It should be fun. 

It would be so awesome to be living in the time period/s of the greatest Classical composers of all time! 

The Musician's daughter is a YA historical mystery set in 18th Century Vienna. It's going to be interesting to see how the author characterises Franz Joseph Haydn. 

And that is what's new on my bookshelf.